"Pioneers" was the headline when Science magazine covered the launch of the academic networking platform ResearchGATE exactly one year ago. In a very short time, a small group of pioneers in scientific communication, located at Harvard University and Hannover Medical School (Germany), has managed to create a worldwide community with more than 50,000 members from 196 countries.

The new H1N1 virus is only distantly related to its nearest relatives, suggesting that its genes may have been circulating undetected in pig populations for some time, according to new research published online by the journal Science.

The fight against leukaemia and malaria - two of the world's most virulent diseases - was rewarded in two out of the four categories at the recent European Inventor of the Year awards. Swiss medicinal chemist Dr Jürg Zimmermann along with US oncologist Dr Brian Druker won the award in the Industry category for his invention of the drug Glivec. Glivec has a 98% remission rate in people suffering from chronic myelogenous leukaemia (CML) - a rare form of leukaemia that affects about 10,000 people every year.

EU-funded scientists have developed a new, non-viral way of getting genes into a cell. The technique appears to avoid the side-effects, such as cancer, which can occur when viruses are used to smuggle genes into a cell. The scientists hope their discovery will 'simplify the way gene therapy is conducted, improve its overall safety and reduce the costs'.

goBalto, an online drug development partnering site for the pharmaceutical development and drug manufacturing industry, announced today its new platform and website, goBalto.com. goBalto transforms the way drug-development partners are matched. The web-based platform enables members to quickly and efficiently find partners, share knowledge, and discover opportunities.

In 2009, the number of physicians using smartphones surged to 64%, according to Taking the Pulse® v9.0, pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research's newly released study focused on physician adoption, use, and impact of the Internet and other technologies. This group of "smart" physicians using mobile devices such as iPhones and BlackBerries increased by 20% between 2008 and 2009. In fact, the number of physicians using iPhones more than doubled in the past year alone.

Tobacco use triggers a number of common diseases in humans including heart disease and lung cancer. However, a group of scientists from Europe may be tobacco's saving grace. They successfully used genetically modified tobacco plants to generate medicines for a number of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. The study was part of the Pharma-Planta project, which was funded under the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) to the tune of EUR 12 million.